Artist Susan Fox Paints Genghis Khan’s Mongolia

American oil painter Susan Fox has traveled the world on wildlife expeditions, photographing and painting her way through the pristine wilds of Kenya and all over North America. But a 2005 trip to Mongolia opened a door to a captivating world and propelled her career down a path closely linked with wildlife conservation.

Fox grew up surrounded by California’s redwood forests in rural Humboldt County. Her two loves as a girl were animals and drawing them.

“If I had paper and pencil, I was happy,” she said. “Whenever I drew, I drew animals

Fox worked in graphic design and sign making until she went back to school in 1987 at age 35 to get her BFA at the Academy of Art University in California.

But her childhood dream hit a roadblock when she discovered that the trend of rejecting traditional painting had been academically embraced.

“At the time, the Fine Art department was not teaching the craft of oil painting, just self-expression, so I majored in Illustration instead, which worked out very well,” Fox recalled. “That has now changed. But it meant I wasn’t able to pursue my childhood goal until I was able to study privately for two years with a teacher here in Humboldt County, starting in 1995.”

Her illustration training, and then successive private training in oil painting, has boosted her ability to accurately and quickly render creatures she sees on her trips.

Fox’s love of animals and the earth has found a home in Mongolia, which, on the brink of a mining boom, is becoming increasingly aware of its own dependence on the land as well as foreign commercial interests in it…

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I went to Susan’s website and looked at her work. WOW. In particular, I love her horses. Her paintings evoke for me what artists in Mongolia might have painted centuries ago. This is not a “contest” poem [I already submitted 5], but here inspired is a linked haiku poem in response to the totality of her imagery.